Reports of paranormal activity lead group to investigate hotel

An eerie sound, a strange sighting, a cold chill are things guests and employees at Shawnee Inn have experienced over the years with no reasonable explanation.

A few comments from past guests have suggested the hotel is haunted, and now they'll find out if that is true.

"I don't know if anything is going on. I've been here by myself a lot and haven't seen anything out of the ordinary, but we've had guests who've sent us pictures with orbs," said Rob Howell, general manager of Shawnee Inn. "We're over 100 years old, so there might be something rattling around in these hallways. We've had some night employees say walking through the ballroom and coming back through they see a candle that wasn't lit when they walked through the first time."

Core Phenomena Research, headed by John Hotchkiss of Saylorsburg, will be doing an investigation of Shawnee Inn and Fort Depuy, right down the road.

The investigation starts this month and will continue through the summer months.

Jeromy Wo, public relations manager for Shawnee Inn, said he has read many guest comment cards talking about possible paranormal events. He said having the investigation will make it possible to let guests know what's going on.

"Sometimes we get guest comment cards asking why we didn't tell them the place was haunted," Wo said. "If they (Core Phenomena Research) encounter anything, we plan on having an overnight program developed in November for our guests so they can walk through what was done."

Hotchkiss and his team of seven investigators will set up overnight at the hotel and look for any signs of paranormal activity.

"For the investigation, we will use meters in the beginning to see if there are any temperature drops. We'll set up a night cam system," said Hotchkiss. "We're going to start our investigation in the Worthington Ballroom and River Room bar. It is said there have been sightings of a woman walking late at night in the River Room bar, and there are reports of hearing voices and screams."

The investigation is not a one-two-three kind of event. It takes a lot of time to gather any evidence and go through it all to determine if anything out of the ordinary is happening.

"We have a lot of work to do. I'm devoting the entire summer to this. I'll be there once or twice a month overnight because it's easier for an entity to manifest when it's darker. Quiet and dark you'll notice more," Hotchkiss said. "We'll do a review of data after. That takes weeks to go through all the audio, pictures and video."

This isn't Core Phenomena Research's first hotel investigation.

They have also investigated Skytop, Frogtown Inn in Canadensis and the Sherman Theater.

"I'm confident we will find something," said Hotchkiss. "I want to get more light shed on this as a more serious science. It's not accepted as a mainstream science, because they can't prove it."